Tolkrah

 

Tolkrah, the Capital of Thorumaa, is one of the largest urban centres in the Deep Kingdoms. Across its long and storied history, it has been many things – an Orog hamlet by the River Tolek, neutral ground between rival clans, a trade depot for a rising kingdom, a citadel for an embattled republic, and finally, in 1698, the foundation stone of an Empire.

If the Thorumaans were a more sentimental folk, statues of the first emperor would stud Tolkrah like gems. But they beheaded the first emperor, and struck his name and image from the records. The people of Thorumaa take governance very seriously.

Corruption is kept low by the promise that your immediate successor will personally behead you if it is discovered.

It is not without reason that Thorumaans are joked to have an obsession with beheading.

The Nation

Surface visitors come to Thorumaa, expecting the regimented culture and quiet public places of Zarumaa high above – orcs are orcs, so they say.

Orcs are not orcs, however. Many a travel journal has commented that the local Orogs dress just as sharply as their Zarag cousins above, but where the Zarumaan society is disciplined and polite, Thorumaa is insubordinate and confrontational.

Orders are constantly questioned, authority is challenged whenever it can be – children make fools of parents, and soldiers make demands of their generals.

Thorumaans say, ‘this is all, as it should be’.

In a nation that went through 8 failed governments before the Empire, questioning the legitimacy of the people in charge has been built in for years.

The Politics

The simple fact is, the Thorumaan system is completely incomprehensible to sunwalkers. The institutions are given names in Tradespeak that do not fit their true nature – truly, the titles of Thorumaan government are untranslatable.

The name ‘Empire’ is something of a misnomer. It calls to mind a militaristic state with an autocratic head and a loyal army. Whereas, Thorumaa currently has 3 Emperors and 2 Empresses, all acclaimed by different sections of the army. This is normal, and is expected.

Two of the Emperors are even married, each equally as powerful as the other. The other three tend to form a ‘voting bloc’ against them, although this is another term that doesn’t apply well.

The toregar, the advisors to the Emperors and Empresses, were originally translated as senators, generals or dukes, in equal measure. None apply correctly.

Certainly, most toregar are involved in the military. Some are most definitively great orators and politicians. Some wield disproportionate influence. Some positions are even hereditary.

However, there are just as many pacifists, silent logisticians, political irrelevancies and promoted peasants among the toregar ranks. 

There is no handy guide for their meanings, no explanation for why the system is such chaos.  To understand the system, to comprehend it’s mad workings, is to be Thorumaan.

To require an explanation is to paint oneself as an outsider.

This is why ‘Tolkran’ is an adjective referring to something excessively complicated, and typically involving a great deal of administrative detail.

The City

Speaking of excessively complicated: Tolkrah itself.

Its history is as excessively varied and incomprehensible as that of Thorumaa, and the winding labyrinths of its districts reflect this.

Consider, in the Deep Kingdoms, travel from one place to another is not as simple as on the surface.

Supplies are scarcer, routes are less reliable, and the fauna ranges from troublesome to lethal, and worse besides.

Cities are not designed to welcome you in from the long road – they are designed to be hard for deep-earth demons or aggressive fauna to invade. Combine this with the necessity of saving space, and you end up with cities like Tolkrah -  put bluntly, a habitable maze.

The most navigable districts for outsiders lie around the River Tolek, where the great black palaces of the many current and former Emperors reach for the cavern ceiling, studded with beheaded statues and ragged banners.

Following the river’s flow, one eventually reaches the nice districts – sometimes referred to as ‘downriver’. Downriver holds all the banks, the embassies, and other such frivolities. They’re kept well away from where the actual governing happens. 

The coming of the vis-rail has only just opened the Underdark to the experience of things like cafes and leisure shopping, and these flourish, like fungi, downriver.

A Tolkrah coffee house is a differing experience from a café in Upper Iskadar. For a start, you’re not lounging on wicker chairs on a sunny afternoon. You’re huddling in a narrow booth, around a small table, sitting next to a steam vent for heat. It’s equal parts sauna and salon.

The drinks, too – coffee and tea are rare and highly expensive imports.

More common is boiled water, gella, a hot, greenish drink made from boiled roots, or turstahk, the local liquor. It is made from a particular root that might be a cousin to ginger. Turstahk is dark green, and oily. It is only drunk in small shot glasses, not due to the alcohol content, but due to the hideous flavour. It is acerbic, strong and catches the throat, and reportedly has notes of fungus and ash.

It’s a source of never-ending confusion for tourists that the locals willingly drink such a disgusting liquid. Thorumaans assign the drink medicinal properties, and its health benefits are a common folk myth among the people of Tolkrah. Many Orogs still end the day with a small drink of turstahk. 

Away from the river, the districts twist and turn and wind into themselves. Streets become stairs and vis-driven elevators. The average number of rooms in a house goes from about 8, down to 1. The fashionable hearths of the innercity are replaced with crudely installed steam vents to keep out the cave chill. In this humid environment, lichens, fungi and cave flora bloom. Visitors have called this part of Tolkrah ‘the greenhouse’.

The symbol of Thorumaa – the cavekkan, or ‘bat-wolf’ – can be seen in facing pairs over every heavy stone arch, or curled around the top of every load-bearing pillar. The real things can be seen stalking every twisting back-alley or stair lined pit.

Thorumaans revere the cavekkan for their capability to work in massive packs when necessary, and to tear each other limb from limb for food, when necessary. Adaptability, action, and a grasp of where they lie in the local power structure. All desirous things for a toregar or emperor.

They also eat the cavekkans in great numbers, because bat-wolves are no match for smart people with traps. This appeals to the Thorumaan sense of irony.

Travelling against the river’s flow, one might find the districts of boilers and forges which heat the city, and produce the metalwork which Tolkrah is famous for. Here, in the forges, the swords which carved out Thorumaa were made. 

The swords of famous heroes are brought back and hung from gate-posts as a form of ‘retirement’ for the blade

The boilers are the most isolated part of Tolkrah. In a world that mostly relies on Vis (a suspension of so-called “mana” in water, to simplify heavily) Tolkrah’s industry is uniquely steam-driven. The heat and humidity of the city comes from here. Tolkrah is a powerful industrial organ, responsible for arming Thorumaa’s relatively massive army (as large as a small surface country’s military, which is way more than any of their neighbours can afford to support.) 

Here, metal is smelted, reagents are reacted, water is boiled, waste is processed and finished products churned out the other side in a never-ending stream.

The Bilges

The physical, magical and gaseous waste of all this industry is funnelled down to a series of claustrophobic caves that lie below Tolkrah. These are the Bilges. The Bilges are haunted by oxygen-deprived vagrants, slithering, fungal things, and the repulsive Voidlings called ‘Mozgriken’, the Choke-and-Choking-Ones.

Mozgriken are hideous nightmare things from the Void-Between-the-Stars – they appear in places where there is a high saturation of unbreathable gases. 

They appear to be gnome-sized things, with lumpy, purply-grey skin, long, wet hands, and a nest of purple, pulsating tentacles in place of a head. They can suffocate you from a distance, exude flammable gases and render themselves down into oily smoke, to better infiltrate your house and choke you in your sleep.

Even in the face of the Mozgriken, though, the most nerve-wracking thing in the entirety of the Bilges, is a Golem. A golem is a clay shell filled with a Sun-Spirit by secretive rituals, and set to tirelessly fulfil a set of instructions. On the surface far above, Golems are treated with fear and reverence, as the Maker’s holy, indestructible soldiers.

The Tolkrans realised it didn’t need to breathe, and shoved it down in the Bilges to operate machinery. It’s maintained by the local Temple of Altum Petram, the Aspect of Earth. In truth it is so durable, and so rarely bothered, that maintenance is often unnecessary. To keep its internal flame from igniting flammable gas, or being extinguished by smothering gases, it has a domed helm of tempered glass mounted to its clay skull.

As with all Golems, the true name of the motivating Sun-Spirit is unknown, but it has accepted the nickname Glare-glass.